


argonautica orpheus

by trailsofpaper (Sanwall)



Category: Bastille (Band)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 12:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10921815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanwall/pseuds/trailsofpaper
Summary: Kyle, like Jason on the Argos, sets out on a journey to retrieve something important but, more importantly, he finds love along the way. Dan, unlike Orpheus, doesn’t look back.(Dan and Kyle are flatmates in Leeds, but when Kyle wrecks his keyboard a week before he and Dan are about to enter a competition, they need to go to London to get another keyboard. Complications and even shenanigans ensue.)





	1. argos - part i

**Author's Note:**

> This is in no way a reflection of the actual people whose names and faces I’ve appropriated for the sake of this story - it’s a free remix of their public personas, and I do not presume to know anything about the aforementioned actual people. 
> 
> This story is based on the Argonautica epic like A Knight’s Tale is based on history, and the myth of Orpheus like the Lion King is based on Hamlet.

Kyle getting a job interview was both the start and the end of his troubles. But it actually begun with preparations for Dan’s birthday.

“‘Course we got to celebrate your birthday, Dan!” Kyle had insisted, even though Dan blushed and hid his face in his arm. “Come on, this flat is big enough for a good old-fashioned house party!”

And it was - Dan and Kyle had thrown their lot together for the second year at University of Leeds, two guys who had kept bumping into each other at first-year parties because they both tended to drift away from people at some point when it all got too overwhelming, and then, after eight times of failing to get each other’s numbers due to different factors (mostly inebriation), they’d bumped into each other at the library and giggled at textbook phrases together until closing time, like finals didn’t even matter

Finals had mattered, but they had both passed, and when they returned fall semester they decided to rent a flat together. Kyle had found it much preferable to the miserable halls, in part because it was big enough for a house party.

“How did you even afford this much sparkling wine?” Dan asked as he helped Kyle carry the boxes up the stairs  since the lift had been out of use since mid-February.

“There’s some really cheap sparkling wine out there,” Kyle replied, setting the box down beside his keyboard in the livingroom. “It tastes like piss, but we got plenty of it.”

That sent Dan into one of those laughs that made him bend his entire body. Kyle loved those laughs, because Dan always turned red in the face, and his huge, blue eyes always glittered afterwards. Kyle regarded him until he straightened up, but before he could say anything, Kyle’s obnoxious ringtone sliced through the air.

Kyle automatically stuck his hand in his right jean pocket, but realized he’d put the phone in his back pocket as they carried the boxes. He fumbled as he pulled it out, and tried to sound as nonchalant as possible when he answered the unknown number.

“Kyle Simmons.”

Kyle noticed that Dan leaned a foot against the box he’d carried up the stairs, and that he didn’t look away from Kyle during the entire conversation. Kyle figured it was because he had a stupid smile plastered to his face as soon as he’d realized the direction the call was going.

“Guess what,” he said as soon as he’d put away his phone. Dan seemed to have sobered up from his laughing fit, and his eyes were huge but not glittering.

“What,” he said, and Kyle couldn’t contain it long enough to insist Dan should guess it. Instead he blurted out:

“I’ve got that job interview! In five days!”

Dan smiled, wide enough for his cheeks to dimple, and he crossed his arms. His grey hoodie sleeves were long enough to cover his hands and gave the impression of a cautious seal.

“That’s great, Kyle,” he said. Kyle nodded and ripped open the box at his feet.

“Let’s celebrate a little prematurely!”

Dan laughed again, and so Kyle opened the bottle of sparkling wine with enough haste that not only did the cork fly right into the lamp, he also spilled the majority of the contents directly over his keyboard.

“Fuck!” Kyle said, while Dan rushed into the kitchen to get some towels. They both did their best to do some damage control, mopping up, the bottle forgotten by the wall while Kyle kept up a constant litany of “ _Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit_.”

“You shouldn’t try it yet,” Dan said, wiping the damp rag one last time over the electronic keyboard. “Let it dry first.”

But Kyle had never been a patient person, and the need to know if his keyboard was irreparably damaged was too urgent, so he switched it on immediately.  Or tried to.

“Fuck,” Kyle said, when the small screen remained dark, and pushed his hand through his hair, some strands catching on the silver thumb ring. “Shit, Dan, we have that singing competition thing in a week.”

“That’s alright,” Dan said, but Dan was complete shit at lying. Kyle could hear the sadness in his voice even if he hadn’t seen the way  his mouth turned downwards in disappointment. “I mean, it’s not like we stand a chance anyway.”

“Don’t say that!” Kyle insisted, grabbing Dan’s arm. Kyle knew what Dan sounded like when he sang, and you’d have to be deaf _and_ dumb not to appreciate the silver bells that was his voice. He’d been looking forward to accompanying Dan on his keyboard, bask in the glory a little.

Dan shrugged, and looked at Kyle from under a strand of his ridiculously long quiff. Kyle tightened his grip for a second before he let go.

“My sister has a keyboard, but she doesn’t use it a lot. I’m sure she’ll let me borrow it.”

The look of dawning hope on Dan’s face was almost painful.

“Doesn’t your sister live in London?” he asked and fiddled with the string of his hoodie.

“Yeah, but it’s only  a three hour drive,” Kyle said, now smiling brightly. “We can nip down there and get back again in a day, with your car”

“Woody borrowed it, remember?” Dan said, shoulders slumping a little. “It’s in Liverpool.”

“So we’ll take the train there tomorrow and wrestle it from his hands,” Kyle said with an exaggerated scoff. “Go on, call him  and tell him we’ll be there tomorrow, after this totally bitchin’ party!”

And there was Dan’s laughter again, and Kyle beamed. He clapped his hands together and retrieved the half-emptied bottle of sparkling wine.

“Here’s to us!” he declared, and took a swig. It did taste like piss, and Kyle choked on it when the bubbles tickled his nose. It was hard to resent it though, because it only made Dan laugh harder.

Δ

The party went off without a hitch, until it didn’t.

It was always the trouble with drink, Kyle mused. It brought out truths about people, and some people were, in truth, arseholes.

“So Kyle here told me you’re going to compete with your singing,” Steve was saying, loud enough to be heard over the background noise of a spotify playlist, swaying dangerously close to the wrecked keyboard, which now doubled as a drink table. Dan looked like he wanted to gently usher Steve away from it, if nothing else to save the cans of beer, but instead clutched his own can closer to his chest protectively as he answered:

“Yeah, but it’s not a big deal. Kyle and I could use the prize money, but it’s nothing more than that.”

“Why don’t you give us a sample, birthday boy!” Steve said, and his drunk buddies all cheered, and Kyle could, even from across the room and operating on three pints, sense Dan’s overwhelming need to curl in on himself and sink through the floor.

“People are having fun, no need to interrupt it with my crooning,” Dan was saying lightly as Kyle made his way over to them. Now that he thought about it, Kyle wasn’t sure that the guy’s name even was Steve, and could not for the life of him remember why he’d been invited.

“No, come on!” maybe-not-Steve goaded, sloshing his half-full glass of beer around. “Sing us a song, Smith!”

“Shut up, he said he wasn’t going to,” Kyle said and had a second to be surprised at himself for the complete lack of willingness to be conciliatory, before maybe-Steve turned his attention from Dan to him.

He was well sloshed, judging by the way his eyes had trouble focusing, and Kyle found himself hating the red bruising on his nose, and the way his lip pulled back over his teeth in a not-quite smile.

“Kyle,” he said, the syllable turning into an ugly roll of a Northern accent. “Fuck off mate, nobody asked you.”

“Well, nobody asked you to open your fat mouth either,” Kyle replied, belatedly realizing that possibly-Steve had like ten kilos on him in pure muscle, even if they were of the same height.

“Kyle,” said Dan, the name much smoother on his tongue, and touched Kyle’s arm. “It’s okay.”

“It’s fucking not!” Kyle said, turning to him and blinking furiously, trying to clear his head. He was turned right back by perhaps-Steve who grabbed his arm, his palm hot and slippery on the naked skin of Kyle’s bicep.

“What the fuck did you say to me,” Steve-or-not-Steve demanded, his rage underscored by the slurring of his words. Kyle figured he was sober enough in comparison to take him on, despite the muscle mass discrepancy, so he straightened up and squared his shoulders, to pull his arm from the grip.

It was when possibly-not-Steve’s sweaty fingers didn’t give an inch that Kyle figured he might have taken in water over his head.

“I think you heard me, you don’t have to be so sore about it,” Kyle said even so, and it was like the temperature in the room rose. The fairy lights strung up across the living room window made surely-Steve’s face blotched with stars as his eyes narrowed and his fists clenched. Kyle winced.

Instead of trying to break things up, the Steve friends formed a half-circle around them, like putting on a wrestling match was a everyday occurrence among them. Kyle felt satisfied in that at least his assessment of them as complete dicks was proven true, and he tried to calibrate how to disengage before anyone ended up physically hurt.

The spotify playlist was turned off in the middle of a song, and the murmur of partygoers fell silent in the same beat. It was disconcerting enough that conceivably-Steve let go of Kyle, who promptly took a step back.

“Hi, thank you all for coming,” Dan said, and Kyle blinked, unsure of precisely when Dan had gone all the way over to the laptop connected to the speakers behind the TV.

Dan looked nervous, but he was smiling as he met Kyle’s gaze from across the room.

“So I figured, if Kyle wants to make good on his birthday gift to me, which is to serenade me on Singstar, now’s the time.”

Kyle felt an answering smile tug at his lips, and the people around him parted to let him through. Charlie, for instance,  laughed and clapped his shoulder when he went past.

The Singstar menu was already flashing on the screen, and Dan handed Kyle the mic with a grin that made his eyes sparkle.

“Oh no you don’t,” Kyle said and grabbed Dan’s sleeve when Dan made to join the expectant audience. “Dan Smith, you sing this duet with me.”

Cheered on by a much more good-natured crowd, Dan allowed himself to be dragged into a heart-rending rendition of _Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong_ even though most of it was drowned out by both of them laughing, and the clapping and whistling of the guests. The mic got passed around after that, and among the terrible covers of various pop songs, Kyle noticed Steve and his goons had slipped away, which was a fucking relief.

It was part of the reason Kyle felt good enough to put the mic in Dan’s hand and pull up Nancy Sinatra’s _Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down._

“Go on, Dan, take it away,” Kyle said, and Dan was buoyed enough by the mood to acquiesce, and by the time Kyle slipped away and Dan realized it wasn’t going to be another duet, it was too late for him to back out.

“ _I was five and he was six_ ,” Dan began haltingly, but the cadence of his voice picked up fast.  “ _We rode on horses made of sticks, he wore black and I wore white. He would always win the fight._ ”

Kyle felt a swell of pride in his chest, that Dan could take this song and imbue it with a melody that hadn’t been there before. Then Dan locked eyes with Kyle, and Kyle forgot to breathe when his voice turned raspy and deep.

“ _Bang bang, he shot me down. Bang bang, I hit the ground. Bang bang, that awful sound. Bang bang, my baby shot me down._ ”

The cheer went up as he started in on the second verse, and Dan’s gaze flickered across the room. Kyle stayed frozen to the spot, knowing that if he closed his eyes the afterimage of Dan’s angular face and wild hair would stain the insides of his eyelids for ages, far longer than fireworks.

Dan closed the song with the appropriate dragging vowel, but the last refrain “ _Bang bang_ ” felt like an actual bullet to Kyle’s sternum, and by the final  “ _my baby shot me down_ ”, Kyle was already over by the keyboard, desperately grabbing a can of beer to down it as fast as he could.

Kyle figured the best way onwards from this kind of realization was nothing short of oblivion.

Δ

“Kyle, come on, we have a train to catch.”

Still half asleep, Kyle cracked one eye open to see Dan’s face hovering all too close for comfort. He could see every damn freckle scattered across Dan’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Kyle tried to reconcile the warring emotions of anger and shame and contentedness he felt at the sight, and it took a good second for his hungover self to sort it out. When he did, he closed his eye and groaned loudly.

Crush, on his flatmate. Whose car they had to go get so Kyle could get his sister’s keyboard to help aforementioned flatmate win money so he could do something with his music, because he absolutely deserved it.

“Give me a sec,” Kyle forced out, and turned to his side. The swell of nausea was expected, but he counted his lucky stars that someone had made him drink enough water before bed so that the headache wasn’t quite splitting.

“We don’t have a lot of secs, Kyle,” Dan said, and Kyle hated how his already upset stomach swooped. If Dan noticed anything, he didn’t show it, and only patted the duvet where it covered Kyle’s hip.

“I already cleaned up from yesterday, and I packed snacks. Put on your best kitten print shirt and let’s go.”

Kyle managed to get upright with another heartfelt groan, whereby he was promptly slapped around the face with a t-shirt Dan threw at him.

“Oi,” Kyle protested, but he was too tired to put uf a real fight. He dressed with haste, and even sprayed on some deodorant before, in an act of petty defiance, he pulled on a flower-patterned t-shirt instead of the yellow one with kittens.

Dan was already in the foyer with his shoes and jacket on and the rucksack slung over his shoulder when Kyle pushed his toes into his sneakers and creasing the heel. He fumbled for his leather jacket, hanging his sunglasses in the v of his t-shirt as he pulled his beanie down over his unwashed hair.

“No bag?” Dan asked softly, and Kyle shrugged, patting his pockets.

“I’ve got my phone and wallet, and if you’ve got the keys and snacks, what more do I need?”

Dan laughed, and normally it would have cheered Kyle up, but this time it sent a spike of dread through him. _Stop liking him so much_.

Δ

They made it to the train with barely a second to spare, and Kyle had to lean his forehead against the window and think of snow to keep from throwing up after the exertion.

“I’m so hungover,” he complained when he finally leaned back, pushing his sunglasses higher on his nose even though the blinds were drawn. Dan sat opposite and nudged his foot with the rubber toe of his ratty black Converse, looking at him over the rim of his tortoise shell glasses.

“After the amount of beer you had last night, I’m not surprised,” he said and dug out a water bottle from his backpack. He handed it to Kyle, who grabbed it without a word to drink greedily.

“I’m sorry about Steve,” Dan said after a beat. “I was afraid he’d hit you or something.”

“So his name _was_ Steve,” Kyle said hoarsely, and wiped droplets from his beard. “What a wanker.”

Dan had closed his eyes and leaned his head back, cosy in his bomber jacket. Now he smiled, and Kyle’s attention snagged on his front tooth, the one that was a little bigger than the other, and tamped down on the terrible feeling of fondness that threatened to overwhelm him.

Δ

When they turned up on Woody’s doorstep, Kyle felt marginally better. His sunglasses were still perched on his nose, and the beanie still trapped his mess of a hair, but Dan had let him sleep the entire two hour journey, so he felt like things were moving up.

That was until Woody opened the door and blinked at them in confusion. He obviously wasn’t expecting them, because his long hair was in disarray, and he was wearing a black t-shirt so old and faded it was grey.

“What the fuck are you guys doing here?” he asked.

“Didn’t you call him?” Kyle said, turning to Dan with an accusatory tone. “You were supposed to call him, Dan!”

“I sent a text!” Dan protested, throwing out his hands. “I thought he saw it! Woody never texts back unless it’s to disagree!”

“Well, what the hell, come on in,” Woody said, stepping aside to let them in. “D’you want some tea or something?”

“Sure, thanks,” Kyle said as they entered Woody’s flat. “We’re here for Dan’s car.”

“I thought you said I could have it for the week,” Woody said, waiting for them to press themselves into his tiny kitchen before he followed. “Shit, I need it tomorrow to go help Will move.”

“Will’s moving?” Kyle asked as Dan said:

“So his girlfriend’s finally coming over from France?”

“Yeah,” Woody said as he filled the kettle with water. “Yeah, they’re moving to a flat in London. I think she’s going to commute to Paris a couple days of the week.”

“Well, we’re going to London too, so maybe we’ll just tag along,” Dan suggested. “I mean, if you’ll let us crash here for the night.

“Yeah, of course,” Woody said, pushing a lock of golden brown hair behind his ear. “I mean, the pullout sofa might be a tight fit, but I suspect you’ll live.”

“No problem babes,” Kyle said easily, a second before the realities of sharing a narrow pullout sofa with Dan hit him like a sledgehammer.

“Oh, yeah,” Dan said with a shrug, sealing Kyle’s doom.

They were both leaning on the narrow countertop, but Dan moved to reach for the tea mugs. The length of his body pressed into Kyle for a beat too long, because Dan apparently wanted a specific mug and not the one at the front, and Kyle wanted to press back. Instead he nudged away as much as he could in the limited space.

Dan handed him a mug with a garish kitten print, eyes twinkling innocently. A small snort escaped Kyle despite himself, and he grabbed the cool porcelain handle to distract himself from looking into Dan’s eyes for too long.

“Will could probably use the help anyway,” Dan said, turning back to Woody, who was examining his milk carton to see if it was serviceable

“I mean, sure,” Woody was saying, the hum of the kettle swelling to a rush. “You’re probably going to have to hold stuff in your lap the entire trip to London, though.”

“We’ll survive,” Dan said with a smile as he stuck his hand into the tin box with the assortment of teas. He rifled through the bags, and Kyle found himself following the movement of his fingers before he caught himself and looked away.

“We only need the trunk space on the way up anyway,” Kyle hurried to say, hating how he stumbled over the words in his haste to cover up his fluster.

The whistle of the kettle almost drowned out his words anyway.

Δ

Kyle  and Dan spent the rest of the day buying emergency supplies from the corner shop and a second hand store - toothbrushes, an extra t-shirt to sleep in.

“If we help Will move, we’re probably going to have to stay in London overnight,” Dan said thoughtfully as he let his hand flick through the second-hand t-shirts on the rack, like Russell Crowe in the _Gladiator_ wheat field.

“You’re right, we should get some socks,” Kyle said. What followed was a ten minute argument on whether or not you could buy underwear second hand (Dan thought Kyle was being uptight, Kyle thought Dan was a slob) during which Kyle blessedly forgot all about the feelings he seemed to have developed for his flatmate and best friend.

They resolved it by buying socks from the thrift store and pants first hand, and Kyle didn’t think he’d ever been quicker in a store - just grabbed the first pair he saw and headed for the till. He really, really did not want to think about Dan in combination with underwear any more than he had to.

It became rather more urgent when Woody at long last turned the TV off in the middle of the Game of Thrones episode, because Dan kept nodding off (despite all the claims of “ _no, no, I want to watch”_ ) and all three of them helped pull the sofa out. Woody threw them some bedding and a pair of covers, and suddenly there was nothing left to do but to change into their newly-bought t-shirts and peel off their trousers to go to sleep.

Kyle found himself hesitating, even as Dan sat down on one end, stretching his legs out as he yawned.

“Right,” Kyle said, his voice too loud in the darkened living room. “Good night, then.”

“Good night,” Dan replied, and he already sounded half asleep. He laid down, back to Kyle so all Kyle could see was the dark tuft of his hair on the pillow.

Kyle made himself as comfortable as he could, painfully aware of each centimeter of his body in relation to Dan, just a hand’s breadth away.


	2. argos - part ii

The road to Birmingham was, like most motorways, mind-numbingly boring. Dan, however, had brought his ipod, and Kyle, who had been relegated to the backseat, had to dig through Dan’s backpack to find it. He also found the snacks Dan had brought, but left the apples and brought out the bag of crisps instead, eating them noisily and throwing the crumbs into Woody's hair.

Dan was driving, so it was up to Woody to scroll through the playlists and albums, in between fending Kyle off.

“Don’t you have anything good on here?” Woody asked with a scoff, prompting loud protests from both Dan and Kyle, who had made up several of those playlists when he had forgotten to keep his own ipod charged.

So a very good portion of the two hour drive to Birmingham was spent arguing about music, and Dan felt that it was, on the whole, time well spent.

Birmingham itself was like a sprawling monster - Dan thought of a dragon made out of concrete and tile, stretched out across the fields, buildings sprouting from between black-and-grey mottled scales of  asphalt, industrial smoke billowing in the distance.

He imagined the dragon stretching, the buildings crumbling around it. Dan had woken in the middle of the night, perfectly content and so, so warm. He was used to not only having trouble falling asleep almost every night, but also waking up with the tip of his nose cold, one foot outside of the cover because he tended to kick around in his sleep.

So too this time; his entire left side was exposed, but he wasn’t cold. He was warm, and half-asleep as he was, he snuggled closer to the source of heat until a soft snuffle and the sound of skin sliding against sheets made Dan jolt awake with the realization that he was sharing a pullout sofa with Kyle.

He had rolled over, bringing his cover with him and shivered until he fell asleep again.

Dan was so lost in thought that Woody had to jab his arm and point to the exit, and Dan turned the wheel with his ears burning red. He chanced a look in the rearview mirror to see Kyle’s reaction, but Kyle was still looking out the window and didn’t seem to have noticed anything.

Dan was used to sneaking glances at Kyle, had made some kind of brittle peace with how much he liked to seek him out. In a way it was freeing, looking at a reflection rather than the actual being. Plato was talking a lot of shit, but sometimes Dan thought he would prefer the pale imitation rather than the true form. See only the shadow Kyle cast on the wall of the cave.

Shadow suited Kyle, Dan mused. Half of his face was shrouded in it, bleeding into his black beard and prominent eyebrows. He blinked, and his eyelashes bisected the gold of his cheek where it was illuminated by the setting sun that had broken through the clouds.

“Turn left here,” Woody said, and Dan turned the car maybe a little too forcefully. No one said anything, but Dan chewed at his lower lip, resolving to let someone else drive down to London when they’d picked up Will.

The car rolled to a halt outside the building that Woody had indicated, and Dan let out a breath through thin lips before turning the engine off.

All three tumbled out of the car, groaning and stretching.

“I really got to pee,” Kyle announced loudly enough that a woman passing by shot him a look and, for some reason, hugged her bag closer to her body. Dan hid a laugh behind his hand, but the pleased look Kyle shot him showed it hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Woody pressed the bell, and they all waited a beat until Will’s voice sounded over the speaker.

“ _ Hello? _ ”

“We brought the car,” Woody said cheerily. “Ready to go?”

“ _ Oh fuck,” _ Will replied, but buzzed the door open anyway. Dan and Kyle exchanged a look as Woody opened the door, and it was with a vague curiosity that they greeted a frazzled Will on the third floor.

“Hi - what are you lot doing here?” Will asked as Kyle pushed past him without so much as a hello.

“Can’t talk, where’s the loo,” Kyle said, jumping on one foot.

“They turned off the water already, you can’t use it,” Will said, in that slow way he always talked, and Kyle turned around in the narrow corridor with a look of abject terror on his face.

“Well, we can find somewhere on the way,” Woody said. “Grab your stuff, let’s go.”

“I can’t,” Will said, looking from Kyle to Woody to Dan, who shrugged apologetically. “There was a mix-up with the moving firm. They need me to be here tomorrow and sign some stuff.”

“Why are all of you all bloody useless at calling to inform people about things!” Kyle said, and Dan scratched the back of his neck, feeling a little guilty. Getting the keyboard from Kyle’s sister hadn’t been his idea, but they were doing it for him.

“Well, if there’s no water in the flat, where are you going to go for tonight?” Woody asked Will, who shrugged.

“There’s a bar downstairs that’s open until four in the morning,” he said. “And I still have the one mattress to sleep on.”

“Great,” said Kyle and pushed back past both Will and Dan. “Downstairs bar, now, let’s go.”

Δ

Dan could appreciate the ambiance of a bar, the strobing lights and the waves of people, he liked watching the current as it flowed. The three of them - Woody, Will, and Dan - squeezed themselves into a booth with a pint each plus one for Kyle, and tried to make themselves heard over the music.

“Why didn’t you tell us there was a problem with the movers?” Dan tried, but Will had raised the pint to his lips and was apparently lost in the world of porter appreciation. Dan exchanged a look with Woody, who smiled and shrugged.

Kyle returned from the toilets and was still wiping his hands on his trousers when he froze before their table. Dan blinked up at him, trying to account for his hesitation, but Kyle didn’t meet his eyes. A sickening swell of muddled emotion washed over Dan when he realized Woody and Will were sitting next to each other, which left only the spot beside Dan.

But then Kyle sat down and grabbed the untouched glass, saying:

“What gives, Will?”

Dan tried to drown out the noise of “ _ what did I do, did I say something last night, has be been like this all day, am I just imagining things” _ and pushed his glasses up his nose before taking a gulp of his beer. 

The hint of citrus amid the tang of  hops evoked some kind of sense memory of when Dan had first met Kyle. It was in a bar like this, with strobing lights and people packed out on the dance floor. They had offered a student discount, and it was Thursday, so it seemed nearly every student at the University of Leeds had migrated there.

Dan was sitting alone, his Music friends having left to go dance, and mulling over his choices in minors over a pint, when a guy had dropped in across from him, sitting down on the stool easily, like he belonged there, and placed a glass of beer in front of Dan.

“You would not believe that queue to the bar, absolutely mental,” the guy said, and Dan saw his eyes widen a little bit when he finished with: “You’re not Charlie.”

“No, sorry,” Dan said, and he remembered smiling politely. “Charlie went to dance.”

“Fucking wanker, abandoning me again,” the guy had groaned, and then pushed the glass over to Dan. “You take it, it’s no more than he deserves.”

“Already got one,” Dan replied, lifting his pint to his lips in demonstration.

“So double fist it,” the guy had said, and Dan had choked on his mouthful of pale ale.

“Sorry,” the guy said, but his teeth were glimmering white underneath his moustache in a smile. “I’m Kyle, and I don’t usually tell people  to double fist it first thing.”

“No, you strike me as the kind of person to buy them dinner with a mariachi band to begin with,” Dan tried to joke, but he was still hoarse from the coughing, so it came out accusatory.

Kyle had put his hands on his chest, arranging his features in a look of pure outrage. Dan remembered his rings glinting red from the strobe light (he was wearing three, two on his left hand, and one on his right thumb, and he still wore those same rings but with an addition on his right ring finger), and that he had a truly ridiculous amount of bracelets wrapped around his bony wrist, cocooning a watch.

“I’ll have you know that I would commission nothing less than a full scale symphonic orchestra to serenade the object of my affection!”

“That’s alright then,” Dan had said, smiling dumbly all the while. “Who doesn’t love a full symphonic orchestra.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Kyle said, and tapped his nose with his index finger. “But the trouble is, where do you go from there? Mountain climbing Mount Everest for a second date is horrible.”

“I’m Dan, by the way,” Dan had laughed, and stretched his hand out. He could still remember the warmth of Kyle’s palm, the way his ring had pressed into the back of his hand.

He looked at Kyle now, the way his beard had grown out from that black stubble, how his mustache was tweaked into points. He knew Kyle tended to fidget with it when he was thinking, and he was stroking his mustache now, rolling the tip absent-mindedly between index finger and thumb.

The recognition of the gesture sent a frisson of warmth down Dan's spine, and he looked down into his glass quickly and tried to listen to Will talking about the move.

“... so, because  _ they _ lost my TV table,  _ I  _ need to be there tomorrow and sign some paper for them. Insurance policy or something.”

“That's bollocks, mate,” Woody said sympathetically. “But why don't you just book a hostel for the night?”

“Not all of us have a cushy job and financial security, Woody,” Kyle threw in, and while his tone was joking Dan thought he could hear tension beneath the words.

Kyle hadn't just seemed happy for the job interview, he'd seemed relieved. They were well into summer, and Dan knew that if they didn't scrounge up some money, their student loans would pay for rent, but not much more. See also; reason for entering singing competition.

“Well, I wasn’t counting on the three bloody musketeers to show up,” Will said, smiling that lopsided smile of his. “I guess we could scrape for a hostel nearby.”

“Or we can sleep in the car,” Dan said. “I mean, we’ve done it before.”

The discussion flowed from there on out, much like the spirits. The more Dan drank, the more he became aware of the hot press of Kyle’s leg against his, and the less he cared about why it made him feel so good. He just felt it, even leaned into it a couple of times.

“Okay, okay, okay, no, see this is where you’re wrong,” Kyle was saying, jabbing his finger at Will. “N’SYNC is a popular culture  _ icon _ , right, so’s it don’t matter that they’re not good! I mean, they’re, they’re, they’re good whether you like them or not!”

Dan was laughing too much to get a word in edgewise, so he pawed at Kyle’s arm to get his attention. He was leaning so heavily on him that when Kyle finally turned to him, Dan felt that swooping sensation when you miss a step going down the stairs and fell across Kyle’s lap.

Dan felt a warm pair of hands on him, helping him sit up again. He flushed hotly, but was at a loss for why he should feel embarrassed and smiled brightly up at Kyle. 

Kyle’s eyes were very dark, and lined with laughter, and Dan felt his heart lodge in his throat and push all the air from his lungs.

“Whoopsie-daisy,” Kyle said with such a low, warm tone that Dan was unable to stop his gaze from wandering down, to the glint of uneven, white teeth between red, red lips. The knowledge that he shouldn’t was a sobering jolt to his sternum, and Dan hurried to straighten up.

“Sorry,” Dan said and pushed his hand through his hair. “Too much to drink on an empty stomach, never a good idea.”

“We can order wings from the bar,” Will said, stretching his neck as if he could summon the food by laying eyes on it.

Dan shifted in his seat. His heart wanted to beat itself out of his chest, so he started tapping at the tabletop, softly. He was used to his feelings coming out in snippets of melody; he’d been writing a whole lot of songs since Kyle and he moved in together.

Δ

The second time Dan had met Kyle, they had both unknowingly at the same time snuck outside a dive bar  - Dan to get a breath of fresh air, Kyle to smoke. Kyle had since kicked the habit, something Dan was proud of him for, even though Kyle claimed it was because their flat had no balcony and he was too lazy to trot up and down five flights of stair more than once every day.

Dan still held some kind of residual fondness for the smell of cigarettes on Kyle - it was forever linked in his mind with the smell of rain and dead leaves and the long walks home through the city in the middle of the night. 

Dan couldn't remember what they had talked about, but he could remember the way the light at the end of the cigarette illuminated Kyle’s brown eyes,  the way orange mingled with blue shadows as the glow flared on his inhale.

Now Kyle was illuminated by the stark green strobe lights of the dance floor, but his eyes were completely black when he and Dan locked gazes over the heads of the girls who had dragged them out there.

The one who had latched herself onto Dan - Anna, with her hair dyed red and mascara smudged around her eyes - laughed and pulled at him to dance, and Dan tried to smile back.

“I’m really bad at dancing,” he said over the noise of Ke$ha telling them about the passage of time.

“Oh, come on!” Anna implored, tugging at his sleeve. She wasn’t obnoxious about it; as far as Dan could tell it was an easy sort of tug, more a request than a demand, and he found he went easily.

He imagined he could feel Kyle’s gaze on him still, boring into the back of his skull. But when he turned back around, Kyle was dancing with Evie, and Dan could see she was laughing at something Kyle had said.

Dan really was bad at dancing, but Evie and Anna found it hilarious, especially when Will butted in to mock-grind on Dan and Kyle by turns, apparently lost in the throes of passion to Lady Gaga.

Woody was deep in conversation with the third girl - Dan didn't even get the chance to find out her name - and it wasn't a surprise exactly when they turned around to find both of them gone.

Dan was on the verge of going from pleasantly drunk where everything was hazy and warm to that in-between state of drowsy nausea before the hangover, that state of mind where the ground was uneven and water tasted terrible.

It was nearing closing time, and both Evie and Anna had left with laughter and ethereal promises to befriend them on facebook. Will had slung his arms across Kyle and Dan’s shoulders, and they were all teetering precariously as they made their way out of the club, into the chilly Birmingham night, thick with mist and smoke and that special night smell of wet and stone.

Will was reassuringly warm and steady between them, and it was jarring when he stopped by Dan’s car and said:

“So I’ve only got the one mattress boys, are you sure you can sleep in the car?”

“Sure,” Kyle drawled and slipped out from under his grip to try the door, which was locked. Dan sighed and dug for the keys, annoyed at how much he fumbled - he felt like he shouldn’t be so drunk anymore.

The blinking of the car being unlocked was an assault on Dan’s senses, and he closed his eyes to shield himself. What he thought was a blink turned out to be something much longer, because when he opened his eyes Kyle was hanging across the opened car door looking at him, while Will had already disappeared into his building.

“So, who takes the back seat and who sits in the passenger seat?” Kyle said, and the only thing that betrayed his inebriation was the lilt that softened up his London accent.

This time, Dan only blinked to bring him into focus; the fall of his black fringe across his forehead, the pale skin of his forearm resting across the car door.

“Take the backseat,” Dan said. “You’re taller.”

“I would argue, but I really want the leg space,” Kyle said, his teeth flashing in a quick grin before he disappeared into the car. Dan ambled around to get to the passenger side door, opened it and slid inside.

His car was cold, and Dan was glad for his bomber jacket. He lowered the backrest of the seat until Kyle complained that his legs were stuck, gave him the finger as he yawned and curled up under his jacket.

“I thought this was going to be a short trip to London and back,” Dan said. “I didn’t expect to get drunk and sleep in my car.”

“Life works in mysterious ways,” Kyle said, and Dan chanced a look at him. He had pulled his beanie down over his eyes, and crossed his arms across his chest.

“Well, thanks for doing this,”  Dan said and took off his glasses, the outline of Kyle’s body blurring together as his eyes unfocused. 

“You better win us that prize money, Smith,” Kyle said, but his voice was already soft with sleep, and Dan smiled.

“Well, with you accompanying me, how could I not?” he tried to joke, but the only reply he got from Kyle was a soft, snoozing noise.

“G’night, Kyle,” Dan murmured, and, thanks to the haze of alcohol, was half asleep by the time he thought he heard Kyle whisper:

“Night, Dan.”


	3. argos - part iii

Kyle loved drinking, he really did. He loved the loose-limbed feeling of invincibility, being impervious to embarrassment, the sheer joy of all your troubles trickling away for a night. What he didn’t like, he decided, was the feeling of parched and greasy grit that permeated his entire being the following morning.

It was not made better by both of his legs having fallen asleep, a state he wished his consciousness would return to. Kyle had clawed himself out of the thick tendrils of a dream that wasn’t a nightmare, but confusing like a deep labyrinth, with everything imbued in a rich, heavy gold that hurt his dream-eyes when he tried to orient himself.

“Ugh,” was the first thing out of his mouth in the harsh light of day, complete with what felt like a cloud of foul breath.

There was a soft, snuffling noise from the passenger seat, and Kyle pressed himself up on his arms, groaning as he stretched his legs.

Dan was still asleep, and Kyle didn’t want to wake him. So he very carefully bent over to coax the car keys from Dan’s lax fingers, curled protectively in front of his chest.

Kyle got out of the car as quietly as he could, feeling almost ecstatic at the chance to properly stretch his legs and work out the kink in his neck.

He kept his mind carefully blank as he wandered the streets until he found a Costa’s, where he nipped in to buy two large teas and a couple of croissants - he knew Dan tended to be nauseous with his hangovers, so the greasy fries Kyle craved would have to wait until later. He also bought two bottles of sparkling water, and pressed them into each of his back pockets. This made for a slightly uncomfortable walk back to the car, but anything to wash down the sickly sweet taste of digesting alcohol.

When Kyle opened the driver’s side door, Dan sat up so quickly he banged his head on the ceiling.

“Ow,” he said, and rubbed his head before kneading the grit out of his eyes. “What’s happening Kyle?”

“Brought you tea and croissants.” Kyle enjoyed rolling the r of  _ croissant _ and exaggerating the French pronunciation of the ending vowel, because it made Dan crack a lopsided smile.

Dan slid his glasses on, and pushed a hand through the truly magnificent mess that was his hair before he reached for the tray of tea and the bag of croissants. Kyle handed them over before he sat down in the driver’s seat and closed the door.

“Oh god,” Dan said as he inhaled the fragrant scent of the tea, and there was a breathy note to his voice that made Kyle swallow. “Kyle, I think I love you.”

Kyle let out a bark of laughter that sounded terribly insincere to his own ears.

“Alright, calm down mate, it’s only tea,” he said, hoping fervently that he sounded flippant rather than desperate. Dan smiled blissfully around the rim of the paper cup, and Kyle ached at the sight.

Kyle pulled flakes off his croissant more than he ate it, a nervous jitter in his fingers that made him tap his rings against the steering wheel when he sipped his tea. Dan seemed unaffected, eating his croissant contentedly as he put his feet up on the dashboard and put on the radio.

They both jumped when Will appeared outside the passenger side window, thumping both hands on the car roof.

Dan opened his window and Will leaned down to look in.

“Hello,” he said as he scanned the interior of the car. “Sleep well? Where’s Woody?”

“He’s not with you?” Kyle asked, trying to wrack his brain for what Woody had gotten up to last night. He only remembered the girls pulling at Dan, and how annoyed he’d been at how easily Dan went.

“No, he’s not with me,” Will said. “I’m going to go fix the moving thing, and then we should probably get going. Can you find him?”

“Sure thing,” Dan said and hauled his phone out of his trouser pocket and dialled Woody’s number. Kyle kept tapping the steering wheel as they all waited for Woody to pick up. He didn’t, and at last Dan let the phone fall down into his lap.

“Well, find him while I go do the thing,” Will commanded, and with that he left as quickly as he had appeared.

“ _ Find him while I go do the thing _ ,” Kyle repeated with a sneer, and Dan shot him a look. Kyle shrugged. That itch was still under his skin, making his leg tremble.

“So, what, should we just drive around and see if we find him?” Dan said lightly. Kyle looked at him, and Dan looked at him, so Kyle blurted out:

“No, let’s walk around instead.”

He was out of the car before Dan even had the chance to respond. Before long, Dan was out of the car himself, and he fell in beside Kyle, like he had always been there.

“What do you say to retracing our steps from yesterday?” Dan said, nudging Kyle with his elbow.

“What, the pub right there?” Kyle said, nodding to Will’s building and the staircase leading to the basement establishment, unforgivingly closed in the clear daylight.

“I meant more like mentally,” Dan said. “Like, do you remember what he talked about with the girl?”

“Christie,” Kyle said and scratched his neck as they started to wander aimlessly down the street. “I’m pretty sure her name was Christie. Evie told me about her. She was getting over a breakup.”

“Woody, a rebound? Hard to imagine.”

“What, Woody is totally a catch!” Kyle said. “It’s those flowing locks, I bet.”

“Those muscular drummer arms,” Dan agreed easily, and both of them laughed.

Dan’s eyes were more grey than blue in the light that managed to permeate the clouds. But if Kyle didn’t focus on them, it almost felt like before, just the two of them walking to campus when their schedules happened to line up. When Dan laughing didn’t make this well of longing spring up inside him.

Δ

“Hey, look, they’ve got a village fair going on!” Dan said, putting a hand on Kyle’s arm. Kyle stilled, and focused on reading the flyer on the side of the building.

“They’ve got rides,” Kyle stated.

“Oh please no, not on a hangover,” Dan said, already looking over at the bustling park with the colorful tents.

“They’ve got street food,” Kyle continued. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go for the biggest, ugliest kebab I can find.”

“If they’ve got chicken wings, I’m there,” Dan said. They went in search for food, and somewhere halfway into a frankly sinful portion of falafel, Dan turned to Kyle and said:

“Are you mad at me for making you do this? With the keyboard?”

“Of course not!” Kyle replied, thankful for the mouthful of falafel that made the words slurred and exaggerated. “What makes you think that?”

He regretted the question immediately, because Dan hesitated in answering. Kyle thought he hadn’t been obvious about distancing himself, but maybe he had. What if Dan had realized why Kyle was trying to distance himself.

But then Dan laughed softly and threw Kyle a glance.

“I’m sorry, I guess I’m overthinking things. You’d tell me if something was bothering you.”

“Damn right I would,” Kyle said, and tried to swallow around the lump in his throat that had nothing to do with the falafel.

They walked past a giant swing set just as the kids were leaving it. Dan and Kyle took one look at each other before they threw the falafel wrappers away and raced each other. 

Kyle fell into the swing, grabbing frenetically at the chains, and they grew breathless with the exertion of swinging higher and higher. Dan kicked his legs out, the shoelaces of his Converse loose and blowing in the breeze.

Kyle managed to get high enough for his stomach to swoop dangerously, but the entire swingset gave a loud, metallic groan as he reached the apex. Both of them came to a screeching halt by putting marks in the gravel with their heels. They exchanged another look, and Kyle felt a laugh bubble up. Dan’s eyes were comically wide, and the laugh died when Kyle couldn’t help but notice how dark his eyelashes were.

For a second, Kyle imagined leaning forward, bridge the breath that was hanging between them, and he imagined Dan would meet him halfway, and those dark eyelashes would brush against his cheek.

Kyle wrenched himself sideways and out of the swing with one leap. He told himself he was breathing heavily from the exertion, and he resolved to not meet Dan’s eyes for a while.

Δ

At some point, Woody must have found a charger because he finally called them. They reconvened with Will, who seemed to have gotten the moving firm sorted, stuffed all the rest of Will’s belongings - including the ratty mattress he’d slept on - inside Dan’s tiny car, fought a good while on who got to sit in the front (Will won, claiming his bigger arms would leave less room for the things in the backseat, and Kyle had to concede defeat after one, sad look at his skinny arms) before they all drove to pick up Woody.

Woody seemed cheery enough, and didn’t seem the least bit phased about how he’d skipped out on them.

“I’d rather share a bed with Christie than with Will,” Woody joked, and pushed a bag heavy enough to knock the breath out of Kyle across Kyle’s lap. He was trying to text with his sister, to tell her that they were coming to pick up the keyboard, and that they would, in all likelihood, have to stay in London overnight.

Will and Dan weren’t listening; they were busy talking about the merits of setting words to a melody versus writing a melody to existing lyrics, but Kyle thought Dan was really just looking for an excuse to write a song about Twin Peaks.

Kyle was right on both accounts, because  Dan  _ was  _  writing a song about Twin Peaks,  _ and _ Woody’s nightly escapade had made them late enough that dusk was falling as they entered the suburbs of London. Will gave Dan wrong directions one time too many, and everyone was a little irritated when they at long last made it to Will’s. However, between the four of them they managed to heft all of Will’s stuff into his flat with almost no hassle at all..

But moving had a way of stretching time like toffee between teeth, and before long it was half past eleven, and Dan said no thanks to the customary moving beer Will offered to buy them out of gratitude.

“No, we should drive to Kyle’s sister, if she still agrees to host us,” Dan said and turned to Kyle. Kyle was pretty much dead on his feet at this point, and kept rubbing the heel of his hand into his eyes to keep them open.

“She fucking better,” Kyle said, some of the emphasis lost in the yawn that sprang up on him.

Dan yawned a moment later, and Woody announced that he would stay and sleep on Will’s couch. Kyle put his arm around Dan’s shoulder and they were halfway down the stairs before Kyel realized what he was doing.

“How about you let me drive,” Kyle said and retrieved his arm carefully.

Dan gave him a look, heavy-lidded with sleep.

“I can drive,” he said, but covered another yawn with his hand.

“Sure,” Kyle said and fought down the urge to yawn too. “But I know the way to my sister better than you, and you’ve been driving the whole way.”

Dan ceded the car keys, and Kyle drove to Millie’s flat on autopilot, the radio on in the background. The London streets were wet with summer rain, and Kyle lost the battle against the yawn.

“Hey Dan,” he said as he rolled to a stop by a red light. “Dan, talk to me so I don’t fall asleep.”

“Hmm,” Dan said, and he sounded so young. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything,” Kyle said, blinking against the scattered lights of the London night. “Talk about your music, you always go on about that.”

“Fuck you,” Dan said and elbowed him in the side. “Alright. I was thinking of writing a song about my parents.”

“Your parents?” Kyle said, and pressed the gas pedal with a corresponding roar from the motor  but without any result, before he remembered to switch the gear from neutral.

“Yeah, like, so we went on holiday last summer,” Dan said. “To South Africa. And I’ve never thought about how they’re from there. Like in the same way I’m from London. I don’t know. It just struck me as a story I’d want to write.”

“You should,” Kyle said, and finally,  _ finally  _ they were turning into the right street, and Kyle started to scan for parking spots.

“Most people write songs about, I don’t know, breakups or one night stands,” Dan said. He ended with a chuckle, but Kyle didn’t hear much humour in his tone.

“Well, have you had a lot of those lately?” Kyle asked, and he didn’t mean to sound so harsh. He saw Dan look at him from the corner of his eye, and he flushed with embarrassment.

“No, I guess not,” Dan said. “But I don’t think you have to write only biographical stories, you know?”

“Yeah, ‘course not,” Kyle said, but he was distracted by the possibility of parking space. “Hold on, let me just back up here.”

When they had parked and made their way up to the apartment, Millie greeted them at the door, already dressed in her pajamas. She hugged her brother and Dan too, before showing them to the living room where she had made up the couch and dragged in an extra mattress.

“Hope you can sleep, I know the curtains aren’t the best at blocking the streetlights,” she said, fluffing the pillow on the couch reflexively. “Or the morning light, for that matter.”

Kyle was too tired to tease her about her mother henning, so he just put his arm around her shoulders in a lopsided hug and kissed her temple.

“Millie, you’re the best,” he said. “Please let us sleep so we can talk tomorrow.”

“Alright,” she said, returning the hug with one arm around Kyle’s waist. “But I have work tomorrow morning, so how about we do dinner?”

Kyle agreed, and so did Dan. Millie disappeared into her bedroom, and Kyle was too tired to argue or even feel anything in particular when Dan took off his trousers and glasses to fall straight across the mattress.

“G’night Kyle,” Dan said into the pillow, and a moment later, when Dan made no move to pull the cover over himself, Kyle realized he had fallen asleep on the spot.

Kyle shook his head and pulled the cover up for him, draping it gently over the slope of his shoulders.

“Fuck,” Kyle whispered, before lying down on the couch and resolutely closing his eyes.


	4. argos - part iv

Dan gasped awake from a dream of such intense longing that it hurt to part with it. He rolled onto his back, and it took a second or two before he was able to place his whereabouts - London, Millie Simmons’ residence. 

Looking to the side, Dan caught sight of Kyle’s arm hanging off the sofa. His chest was rising and falling peacefully, steady like the sunlight streaming in through the living room window.

Dan ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying desperately to recall what had happened in his dream, but all he could think of was a sense of comfort, someone being close to him, and then the slow fall of waking up, trying desperately to stay asleep.

He found his phone in the pocket of his discarded trousers, and thumbed it open to find three messages from Will.

_ You know Mark? He has a home studio _

_ We figured we could go jam a bit with Woody there _

_ If you and Kyle wanna join _

Dan rubbed at his jaw, palm scraping over the stubble that he hadn’t had a chance to shave in three days.

“Hey, Kyle,” he said, voice coming out as mostly as a croak.

He saw Kyle’s brow furrow; he shifted so that the cover slid down along the line of his dangling arm, and Dan  realized he was sleeping topless.

Dan had seen Kyle topless on several occasions - they were flatmates after all, and Kyle had the habit of walking around in only his towel after the shower, dripping water all over the kitchen floor as he leaned on the counter and fiddled with the radio - but somehow it seemed different now, here in an unfamiliar living room.

Kyle opened his eyes, and the sunlight illuminated his brown eyes like pouring a glass of whiskey. Dan could see the moment Kyle’s gaze focused on him.

“Your beard’s red,” he said with a hoarse voice; an octave lower than Dan was expecting.

Dan lifted a hand to his chin again, surprised that Kyle should take note of something like that, but before he could say anything, Kyle blinked and cleared his throat.

“What’d you wake me for?” 

Dan shifted to  cross his legs  and looked at his phone.

“Will asks if we want to go over to Mark’s and jam,” Dan said. “What do you think?”

“Might be fun,” Kyle said and pushed his hand through his hair as he sat up. “Yeah. We could maybe try to squeeze in a little rehearsal for that competition.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Dan said, but a smile was tugging at his lips. He had his doubts for his own ability as a performer, but what weighed on him more was the nagging suspicion that Kyle was helping him out only to humour him. Kyle bringing it up on his own made something warm unfurl in Dan’s chest.

Kyle yawned and stretched, giving Dan an eyeful of his armpit of dark hair. For some reason it made Dan avert his eyes.

“Do you think your sister would lend me a towel?” Dan said. “Like, it’s been days since we’ve showered.”

Kyle gave a cough, and scratched the back of his neck.

“Millie probably left for work already,” he said, eyes fixed on the closed bedroom door. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?”

“I hardly see how borrowing a towel would hurt her either way,” Dan said. “D’you know where she keeps them?”

Kyle didn’t, but together they went on a searching spree in their underwear, which somehow ended up in a wrestling match over the towel when they finally found the linen cupboard. It left Dan flushed and laughing but victorious, Kyle ceding the towel when Dan pretended to lock him in a weak half-nelson.

Dan didn’t think a shower had ever felt better - he stood under the hot spray for a good deal longer than necessary - and putting on his creased trousers and his day-old t-shirt afterwards was pretty high up on the list of unpleasant but necessary things.

He emerged from the bathroom with his hair still damp, to Kyle having fried up a proper breakfast of eggs and bacon in the kitchen, expertly scraping it up in two approximately equal portions.

“I put on some coffee,” Kyle said. “Millie is a heathen who doesn’t like tea, so her selection is abysmal.”

“Coffee’s fine,” Dan said, and realized this was the second consecutive day Kyle had provided him with breakfast, and he felt vaguely guilty about it. “Thank you, honestly.”

“I think I burned the bacon,” Kyle said, peering closely at his plate as he plonked Dan’s down in front of him.

“I like it when it’s crispy,” Dan said, and even if it was true he said it mostly to assuage Kyle. Dan would have eaten the bacon even if it was burnt to a coal.

Δ

They met with Will and Woody at Mark’s, even if Mark had to leave a couple of hours in - he left them the extra key and told them to just lock up when they were done because he could get the key back from Will later.

Will had brought his own bass, and Woody pounced on the set of drums like a starving man on a hot meal. There was only one keyboard, but Dan and Kyle were used to sharing and just stood shoulder to shoulder whenever Dan wanted to try something out, maybe play a snippet of a melody that had been stuck in his brain ever since Kyle had picked up Dan’s plate for him when he was done and asked him if he wanted the rest of his coffee because Kyle actually hated to drink his coffee black.

They even rehearsed the song Dan was going to perform - and Woody added a drumbeat to it, and Will tried to put a bassline there too even if it was a little superfluous. But the song evolved from there, into something else, something more orchestral that sent Dan’s thoughts spinning.

If he was going to  make an actual go of this singing, he would want it to be a band, that much Dan knew. He just hadn’t known that maybe he already had the band together.

Before he could even start to  put his thoughts together and voice them, Kyle struck one off note on the keyboard and turned away from Dan to pull the phone out of his back pocket. A gust of cold invaded the space where they had been pressed together, and Dan remembered waking from that half-remembered dream.

“Millie says she’s home and starting dinner,” Kyle said, and half-turned back to Dan. Dan leaned in instinctively, as if to read the message himself.

“Alright,” Dan said, meeting Kyle’s eyes. They were wide, like he was waiting for Dan to say something further, so Dan continued: “Should we leave then?”

“Yeah probably,” Kyle said, looking to Woody and Will. “Hey so, we should head back to Leeds tomorrow morning, how about you?”

“I might stay a couple of days now that I’m here,” Woody said, flicking some hair out of his face with a nonchalant gesture. “Will’s offered to let me crash.”

“Suit yourself,” Kyle said, putting out a hand as if to guide Dan to the door, but he let his hand fall at the last second. Dan found himself wondering, for a brief second, where Kyle would have let the hand rest, if he had let it.

Δ

Millie was in the process of straining the rice when they walked in the door since Kyle had snagged the extra key on their way out.

“Smells amazing!” Kyle called from the foyer, and Dan had to agree - spices and melted butter made for an enticing aroma that had his stomach grumbling.

“We should have brought something,” Dan said as they sat down. Millie shot him a look, her brown eyes so like her brother’s but different at the same time - bigger, and more almond-shaped.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “If I know my big brother right, he would have brought something completely useless anyway.”

“I might have, but not Dan!” Kyle said, already reaching for the pot of curry. Dan tried to protest, belated realizing that in trying to defend Kyle’s good taste, he was discounting his own.

The discussion flowed easily from there on, until Millie reached for her glass of water and asked how their job situation looked for the summer.

“Well, I’m kind of working on my music,” Dan said, cringing at how pretentious it sounded. “I mean, there’s a competition, and the winner gets some money. Kyle is helping out.”

“So that’s why you need the keyboard,” Millie said with a laugh as she set the glass of water down again. “Kyle just said he fucked up his own, I didn’t realize he wasn’t just being cheap.”

“I’ve got an interview for an office  job lined up,” Kyle said around a mouthful of curry. “An internship thing. Tomorrow.”

Dan felt the bottom of his stomach fall out, while at the same time Millie said:

“Tomorrow? Where?”

“Leeds,” Kyle answered, and Dan tried desperately to think of something to stop where things were headed, because he already saw the discussion unfold, even if Kyle seemed completely unaware.

“Leeds?” Millie repeated incredulously. “Then that the hell are you doing here? Have you prepared for it?”

“‘Course I have!” Kyle said. “Besides, it’s just an interview.”

“Oh my god Kyle, if you want this job, you have to like, research. Think of something to ask them about the work you’re supposed to do!” Millie said. “What about your resume? Do you have it printed out? What time is this interview even?”

“It’s at three or something,” Kyle said, and he sounded both annoyed and a little vague, which made Dan try to hide his face in his bowl of curry.

“Or something?” Millie said, her voice rising. “Kyle, you don’t even know when it is? Jesus, no wonder you’re just bumming around without a job.”

“Hey, I’m not bumming around,” Kyle said, putting his fork down with a clatter. Dan tried to shrink back. “I have the time written down, I just don’t remember it on the top of my head!”

But there was no deterring Millie. She had straightened up in her chair, her hands firmly planted on the tabletop and her black hair coming out of her ponytail in wild  strands; she made a terrifying Medusa, turning not Kyle but Dan into stone.

“I can’t believe you have a job lined up, and instead of preparing for it you’re fucking around with a music thing that might not pan out and drive all the way down here for a keyboard!”

“The music thing will fucking pan out,” Kyle said, and the conviction in his voice made Dan look up. Kyle had locked eyes with Millie, and didn’t seem to be budging an inch. “It will, Millie, have you ever heard Dan sing?”

Dan’s mouth fell open - he wanted to protest, but wasn’t sure of exactly what. Millie seemed to want to change tracks, because she hesitated for a second before she said:

“And then you plan on driving back the same day as the interview? What does Dan think about this?”

“Don’t bring him into this!” Kyle said and got to his feet, his bowl forgotten. “Jesus Millie, I can take care of myself!”

“I’m not saying you can’t,” Millie said, glancing at Dan, who still had no idea what to say. “ I’m just saying that maybe you should think about your own opportunities.”

“Opportunities,” Kyle said with a scoff and turned away. “I’m going to go buy cigarettes.”

And with that he left, leaving Dan and Millie speechless as they heard the front door slam shut.

“What did I say?” Millie said, astonished.

“He’s stopped smoking,” Dan said, and before he knew it he was out of his chair and rushed to put on his shoes and grabbed his jacket.

“Take the key,” Millie said, gathering the bowls together. She sounded vaguely exasperated, but Dan shot her a thankful smile as he grabbed the extra key and slipped out. 

When he got out on the street, a light drizzle had started to fall. By the time he found the nearest Tesco, the drizzle had thickened to a veritable downpour, and Dan tried to flip the collar of his bomber jacket up as protection, but the water found ways to trickle down and soak his collar anyway.

He found Kyle outside the store, hair plastered to his forehead and black as ink. He was holding a cigarette but made no attempt to light it - he just rolled it between his fingers, lost in thought.

Dan felt suddenly self-conscious about approaching Kyle. He hunched his shoulders a little and stepped close anyway.

“Hey,” he said, and Kyle’s eyes snapped up to his. Dan saw surprise, and then something that looked a whole lot like anger before Kyle looked down at the cigarette between his fingers again. Dan swallowed down the feeling of fear - he honestly had no idea how to deal with a Kyle that was angry with him.

“You don’t smoke anymore.”

“No,” Kyle said, voice so quiet Dan could barely hear it over the rain hammering on the asphalt and the tin roof overhang to the doors of the building lining the street. “I just needed something to do other than, I don’t know.”

“Other than what?” Dan tried, and normally he would try to inch closer, maybe nudge Kyle encouragingly, but something held him back.

Kyle met Dan’s eyes again, and the anger Dan thought he saw had transformed into helplessness. The air between them was heavy with meaning that Dan didn’t know how to parse.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Kyle said. He sounded so scared that Dan’s heart ached, sudden and sharp. 

A bottomless notion clawed at Dan’s mind, but he tried to push it aside even as his gaze slid down Kyle’s rain-streaked nose to his mouth for a second. Kyle had his lower lip caught between his teeth before he opened his mouth to speak and Dan looked back up into his eyes.

“I’m sorry Dan,” Kyle said. The heartache grew bigger inside Dan, so much so that he had to inch closer and reach out a tentative hand. Kyle shifted, but didn’t look away.

“I think I have feelings for you,” he said, and Dan’s thoughts ground to an immediate halt.

Dan blamed just that, the complete lack of rational thought, for the way he put his hand on Kyle’s arm and leaned in across all that weight between them.

The kiss was cold and tasted of that particular earthy wetness of rain - but after a second, Kyle parted his lips, and warmth bloomed from the point of contact and with it came the taste of spices and  _ Kyle _ .

Dan was vaguely aware that he made some kind of noise, but nothing mattered in that second more than getting closer, and so he stepped closer, almost in between Kyle’s legs - and Kyle,  like a complete idiot, wasn’t wearing a coat so his t-shirt was soaked through and cold against Dan’s zipped-up jacket. But Dan wound his arm around Kyle’s waist, and Kyle’s hands came up to cradle his neck, and they were still kissing. 

Dan felt the fingertips against his neck, the thumbs on his cheeks, the cold of Kyle’s rings, but his eyes had fallen closed and he was afraid of opening them, of ruining everything.

After an eternity that was just a moment, Kyle moved his head away so his beard scraped across Dan’s lips. Dan made a soft noise of surprise, but it came out breathless. He had to blink his eyes open, eyelashes heavy with water, and found Kyle’s eyes, black in the rain-soaked dusk, regarding him.

“What the fuck Dan,” Kyle said, and his voice was both soft and raspy. Dan couldn’t understand why he hadn’t kissed him every day since he first had met him.

“You started it,” Dan said, and he realized he was smiling.

“No, I really didn’t,” Kyle said, and he wasn’t smiling. “For how long have you known, Dan?”

“I didn’t know,” Dan said. “But probably forever, on some level.”

And this time, Kyle smiled - a wide smile, with his teeth bright against his black beard.

“You could have told me,” he said and pulled Dan’s face closer so that they were nose to nose. “I only figured it out a couple days ago.”

Δ

They walked back to Millie’s, not hand in hand, but close enough that their hands kept grazing. A quiet look between them decided that they wouldn’t tell Millie, not yet - Dan was glad to keep it between the two of them. It felt too fragile and new to be shared.

Kyle apologized for his behaviour, and Millie shrugged and told him to put the keyboard in the car already so they could get going first thing in the morning because Kyle should really not fucking miss that interview.

Kyle agreed, and Dan had to hide a smile in his hand, which was easy because it turned into a yawn of itself. The rest of the evening passed in a kind of blur, Dan torn between watching Kyle’s every movement, and trying to work through the millions of thoughts buzzing around in his head. How would their friends react? At what point should they tell people? How was it going to work when they already shared a flat - moving in was supposed to be a big deal. What if they never got that far in their relationship?

Dan had worked himself all up into that state of self-deprecation and  _ it will never work out _ that seemed to be his default when Millie finally said goodnight and left them in the living room that still had the made up sofa and mattress on the floor. 

Kyle met Dan’s eyes and smiled; and just like that, the thoughts in Dan’s head quieted down to a single, happy note of  _ I like him and he likes me _ .

Dan didn’t think his mind had ever been as quiet as when Kyle rolled over on the couch, to set down his arm so he could lace his and Dan’s fingers together. Kyle was smiling, so Dan was smiling too.

“Should we take it slow?” Kyle whispered, and his thumb slid along Dan’s index finger in a soothing gesture.

“We probably should,” Dan said and curled his fingers in Kyle’s, as if to say  _ not too slow _ .


	5. argos - part v

It wasn’t an overreaction, on Kyle’s part, to have been overwhelmed by the thoughts of his future in relation to Dan. For one second, by his sister’s kitchen table, the foolishness of investing so much in a person who didn’t return his feelings had been brought into stark relief, and Kyle had shattered.

He had not expected this to arise from the shards of his breakdown - Dan blinking awake, a smile breaking out on his face like dawn over the horizon, before he even realized Kyle was regarding him with a similar smile. Their hands, linked together on top of the shift stick while Kyle drove them out of London, every glance  and secret smile they exchanged.

They hadn’t been on the motorway for long when Kyle had to pull over for fuel. Dan insisted on paying - something about how they were only getting this keyboard for him, and it was his car besides. Kyle tried to argue that precisely because it was Dan’s car, he should pay his fair share of the petrol, and they should bill Will and Woody for it too.

Finally, Kyle threatened to pay for Dan’s dinner, but Dan laughed like the idea was ridiculous even as he slid in behind the wheel. Kyle huffed and got in himself, but leaned over the handbrake and pulled Dan in by the collar to plant a firm kiss on his lips.

If Kyle had stopped to think for a second, he would have marveled at the way Dan let himself be pulled, how easily his lips yielded beneath Kyle’s. As it was, he lost himself in the scrape of Dan’s three day stubble over tender lips, the soft sound of breathing and the rustle of clothes.

When they pulled apart, Kyle took a moment to freely appreciate Dan’s eyes for the first time - the perpetual look of astonishment in the clear blue of them was probably reflected in Kyle’s own, but Kyle couldn’t wait to memorize the precise slant of those eyes, the way his eyelashes fanned over his freckled cheeks when he blinked.

“We better get going,” Dan said, smiling slightly. Kyle glimpsed that one wonky front tooth, and he wanted nothing more to pull Dan back, to keep kissing him like nothing else mattered. But instead he exhaled and leaned back, nodding.

Δ

In the end, Dan parked outside their flat, and Kyle grabbed his keys to rush in to get changed into a dress shirt before rushing back out, throwing himself into the car and telling Dan to put the pedal to the metal in his best approximation of an American accent.

Dan laughed and Kyle’s heart fluttered because Dan had to give him a good luck kiss and had to give Dan a goodbye kiss which meant that Kyle arrived at the office with seconds to spare, a little out of breath and furiously trying to smooth down  his mussed-up beard.

The interview went as interviews tended to go, Kyle thought afterwards. Mostly a blur of nerves and stammering words on his part, cool detachment married to keen interest on the interviewer's part. Kyle really had no idea what to think of it, so he walked back to their flat in a slightly dazed state.

Kyle was glad for that goodbye kiss, because after dropping Kyle off, Dan had left to sneak inside uni and mess around on the computers in the music lab for some sound mixing. Kyle only now realized that when Dan started working on something in earnest, it could be hours and hours before he remembered he was human and had to take a break.

If Kyle was prone to self-doubt, he would have gone out of his mind with the wait. Instead he decided to hold onto the way Dan had looked at him in the car just before they kissed, like he shared the feeling of disbelief that this was happening but was giddy about it.

So Kyle rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and started to pay Dan back for the petrol by making them dinner from scratch. It was a gamble, because god only knew when Dan was planning on getting  back, but Kyle decided to cheat. When the spaghetti was boiling, he texted Dan that he better bring the car around, because he wanted to set up the keyboard and get some practice.

Dan replied  after eleven minutes with a smiley face, and after that Kyle could calculate the travel time to near perfection. He hadn’t counted on Dan single-handedly carrying the keyboard up the stairs himself and getting stuck with it in the passageway to the door, and Kyle had to come to his rescue.

The pasta carbonara had cooled considerably by the time the keyboard was in place, and Kyle was as sweaty and flustered as Dan when he tried to smoothly usher him into the kitchen.

Dan stopped dead when he saw the plates and cutlery laid out, and Kyle was so grateful he hadn’t been able to find candles because that would have been over the top and he would have died of embarrassment as a result.

As it was, Dan turned to Kyle, and Kyle noted with great delight that a flush had risen on Dan’s cheeks.

“So the interview went well?” Dan asked, and instead of sitting down at the table he took a step closer to Kyle.

“It went alright.” Kyle said. “I only made pasta, don’t let it go to your head.”

Dan exhaled on a smile, his nose scrunching up with it, as he put a hand to Kyle’s chest. His knuckle skated feather-light across his ribs.

“You didn’t change out of the shirt,” he said, and his eyes trailed much like his hand, and Kyle stopped breathing for a second. “It’s weird seeing you in a shirt that has a collar.”

Dan looked up into Kyle’s eyes, and there was simply no way Dan didn’t know how he looked when he did that, those blue, blue eyes through dark lashes and his sharp cheekbones down to the mouth open over a breath, and Kyle pulled Dan closer by his hips because he couldn’t not.

“It feels weird to be wearing it,” Kyle said. It could have been a line, but it was the truth and telling Dan about it felt frighteningly right. It was like everything had changed while they stayed the same.

Dan’s eyes fell down to Kyle’s mouth as his hand rose to the collar of Kyle’s shirt. The top button was already undone - Kyle was unsure if he had ever buttoned it in the first place - and Dan hooked his index finger in the v of it.

“The food’s getting cold,” Kyle said, but it was lost in the kiss that happened as inevitably as blinking, lips meeting in an unspoken question.

Kyle inhaled deeply through his nose, a sigh in reverse, and trailed his hands up Dan’s back, feeling the jut of his shoulderblades under his palms before his hands found their place cradling the back of Dan’s skull. The short hairs tickled his skin, but he only pressed Dan closer and Dan gave a soft moan that Kyle swallowed up eagerly.

Dan smelled a little unwashed and a lot like the inside of a car, and Kyle was sure he smelled the same under the many layers of deodorant, but Dan didn’t seem to care. He undid one button on Kyle’s dress shirt, and then the next, and at some point they separated enough to look each other in the eye as if to make sure they were both thinking the same thing.

It was like an avalanche starting from the small pebble of lips touching; soon they were stumbling out of the kitchen, entangled in each other’s arms and clothes half-undone, both laughing breathlessly at the eagerness neither was willing to control.

Kyle’s room was closer and, even though they were alone in their flat, Kyle closed the door behind them with a kick. Emboldened by the notion of utter seclusion, he pulled Dan’s t-shirt over his head, leaving his already wild hair in an utter mess. Kyle would have laughed at the disheveled state if Dan’s mouth hadn’t been open and his chest heaving, if his eyes hadn’t been half-lidded with desire.

Instead of laughing, Kyle gently guided Dan to sit down on his unmade bed that he hadn’t slept in for days, before he sank to his knees. Kyle locked eyes with Dan before pressing an open mouthed kiss to Dan’s stomach.

It moved under his lips, a shivering exhale.

“Your beard,” Dan breathed. “It tickles.”

Kyle lifted his head to apologize, but Dan’s hand landed in his hair, his fingers molding along Kyle’s scalp with an intoxicating pressure.

“I like it,” Dan mumbled, like he was ashamed of admitting it. Kyle returned to press kisses to Dan’s soft, flat stomach, the sharp jut of his hipbone.

Dan lifted himself off the bed to help Kyle pull his trousers down,  and Kyle moved downwards, to the crease between hip and thigh and hot skin. Dan let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a moan, high and throaty at the same time.

Kyle set about to make Dan repeat that sound over and over again, but Dan had other plans and pulled Kyle on top of him after a while, when they were both shining with a thin layer of sweat and the room was loud with the sound of their breathing. Kyle didn’t get the chance to strip, because Dan pushed his hand into his pants as soon as he got the chance.

“Oh,” Kyle said, blinking and curling his free hand in the sheets beside Dan’s head to hold onto a semblance of control. “Oh, Dan.”

“Is it okay?” Dan whispered, and Kyle saw that his brow was furrowed in genuine worry, that his hand slowed.

“It’s fucking perfect,” Kyle whispered back and kissed his brow, before arching over him with the tension of the feelings sparking inside him, desperate to bring Dan with him over the edge.

“So much for taking it slow,” Kyle said afterwards, when they were lying across his unmade bed, breathing into each other and half tangled together.

“I’m sorry,” Dan said and shifted. Kyle hurried to put his hand to his cheek, to make him look at him. Dan blinked at him, and Kyle saw that Dan was already in the process of putting his walls back into place, so he quickly said:

“I’m going to take a shower and please,  _ please  _ say you’ll join me.”

A smile bloomed on Dan’s face, crinkles appearing in the corners of his eyes, and Kyle swept a thumb across his cheekbone.

“Alright. If you want me to.”

“It’s because you smell,” Kyle said, but he belied his words by pressing his face into the crook of Dan’s neck to inhale deeply and contentedly.

Δ

They did not have much time to either talk about their budding relationship or develop it further during the next couple of days - the competition was looming closer and closer and they had only a couple of days to acquaint themselves with the new keyboard, to make the performance seamless.

If standing beside each other by the keyboard felt more weighted than before, if Kyle sometimes skated his fingers across Dan’s to tease a smile from him, then that was only natural.

Dan was so nervous that it took Kyle until around ten minutes to curtain to realize he, too, was absolutely bricking it. He noticed it when Dan gently pulled his hand down from his mouth because he was chewing his nails like there was no tomorrow.

“Do you want to back out?” Dan said, and there was a shiver in his voice that made Kyle tighten his fingers around Dan’s.

“No,” Kyle said. “But I do need to wee.”

Afterwards, Kyle could barely remember how the gig had gone - he had fucked up at one point, but no one had seemed to notice, and anyway, Dan’s voice was captivating with or without their joint key accompaniment. The applause by the end had been thunderous, and not only thanks to all of their uni friends that showed up.

What stood out in Kyle’s mind was the rush of adrenaline that didn’t seem to fade, and the flush on Dan’s cheeks afterwards, the way his eyes seemed to shine with it even as their friends crowded around them to buy them a beer or pat them on the back.

Kyle lasted around seventeen minutes, incidentally the time it took for him to down his beer, before he discreetly pulled at the hem of Dan’s t-shirt and nodded towards the gents. Dan’s eyes widened, his mouth opened just a fraction, and Kyle tugged once more, insistently, before turning on his heel and marching off.

His heart was lodged in his throat as he pressed inside one of the stalls - the plaster walls were painted black like the porcelain, but they were covered in bright scrawls and deep scratches and layers upon layers of posters and stickers. He had a split second of doubt, but then Dan slunk in beside him, and locked the door behind them.

“Are we really doing this?” Dan asked, voice just above a whisper. Kyle caught his face between his hands and kissed him on the mouth.

“Only if you want to,” Kyle mumbled into Dan’s lips, but he was already fumbling one hand beneath Dan’s t-shirt while Dan put his arms around Kyle’s shoulders and buried his hands in his hair. “Fuck, Dan.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, and his voice broke off in a breathy laugh when Kyle slid both his hands down to get Dan’s trousers open.

The stall was incredibly cramped, so Kyle had to push Dan up against the layered wall, legs practically between his thighs as he had one hand on Dan’s cock and the other in his hair, pressing him closer. Dan pressed back just as intently, clawing at Kyle’s back and put his mouth to the joint between Kyle’s neck and shoulder partly to kiss, partly to muffle the sounds.

“Do you want me to,” Dan gasped, when he had gone lax in Kyle’s arms and left a red mark on Kyle’s throat. Kyle shook his head, taking Dan’s face between his hands again.

“I want us to go home,” he said, planting a quick kiss on Dan’s lips. “Do this properly.”

Dan blinked, and his eyes were so, so beautiful even in this shitty lighting, and Kyle had to swallow down a wave of affection that threatened to spill out in words. He only caressed Dan’s cheek with his thumb, and Dan smiled and said:

“I’d love to.”


	6. orpheus

**i. la petite mort**

Dan closed his eyes for a second, in a desperate attempt to slow things down.

Things had been slow from the start; a lazy morning where they awoke from the sun coming in through Kyle’s window because they’d forgotten to close the blinds last night, Kyle pressing lazy kisses along Dan’s neck and back, Dan complaining about being tired.

“You don’t have to do a thing,” Kyle had said, and Dan had felt him smile against his spine, and now Kyle was riding him with slow, almost sleepy, rocking movements that left Dan gasping.

He didn’t want the slow buildup of sensation to end, so he gripped Kyle’s thighs tight, focused on the feeling of coarse hair under his palms and tried to think about other things. Like how they had been together for only a week and Dan was already thinking of selling his bed and sleeping in Kyle’s for the rest of his life because, as it turned out, sleeping in Kyle’s arms had all but banished his insomnia.

Dan was pulled out of his reverie by the shrill noise of Kyle’s phone ringing. His eyes shot up, meeting Kyle’s, and Dan could see the regret in them, could see that Kyle had decided to answer the phone. Dan, to his vague horror, gave a whine in protest.

“I have to,” Kyle said, and Dan was gratified to note that he sounded breathless. He still tightened his grip on Kyle’s thighs. Kyle grinned then, and gripped Dan’s leg by the knee and hoisted it up while he leaned forward on his other arm to reach the phone, to bring Dan with him.

Dan gasped as he was folded in two, the angle new and completely enticing. His hands shifted, sliding up to Kyle’s ribs, and Kyle let go of his leg to press a finger to Dan’s lips before answering the phone.

Dan looked at Kyle, his dark eyes mere inches from Dan’s face as he blinked slowly and said:

“Kyle Simmons.”

Dan had to close his eyes again, but he parted his lips so the pad of Kyle’s index finger fell between them. Dan loved Kyle’s fingers. He loved the length of them, the shape, how they always moved over his body with the same casual confidence they moved over keys. Dan grazed his teeth against the finger, tasted salt on his tongue.

“Er,” Kyle said, and shifted. Dan bit down instead of groaning audibly. Kyle cleared his throat, didn’t remove his hand, and said:

“Of course.”

Not moving was getting on the verge of painful. Dan felt his thigh start to tremble with the exertion of holding Kyle’s weight and he really wanted to move, to push closer. Kyle’s voice was a notch huskier than usual when he finally said:

“Right. Bright and early, Monday morning.”

Dan saw him take the phone from his ear, and as soon as he’d closed the call, Dan did push. Kyle’s entire body rocked with the movement, and the hand holding the phone shot down beside Dan’s head to brace his weight.

“Ah,” Kyle said, and Dan said nothing at all as he moved because he still had Kyle’s fingers between his teeth.

Dan came with a gasp. Kyle’s finger slipped out of his mouth and his hand came to rest on Dan’s heaving chest as Kyle took himself in his other hand and finished not seconds later, painting Dan’s belly and his own underarm with come.

After one breathless second, Kyle slumped down to blanket Dan with his entire body. He was so lax and heavy that Dan had trouble breathing, but he couldn’t muster the energy to care. He only trailed his hand up Kyle’s spine, to rest his palm against the base of his skull.

“I got the job,” Kyle mumbled into Dan’s neck. Dan smiled and tried to look down at him, but only got a faceful of Kyle’s hair.

“That’s great,” he said sleepily. “You make the money, I make the music.”

Kyle laughed, and the added pressure made Dan groan and shift away from under him. Kyle rolled off obligingly, and sat up on the bedside. He stretched, and Dan couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to put a hand on his back, just to feel his skin under his palm again.

* * *

 

**ii. underground**

Dan only realized he had already grown used to being with Kyle every waking and sleeping moment during these weeks of hazy summer when Kyle suddenly wasn’t there at all. He needed this job as an internship for his studies, but surely overtime every day was overdoing it.

Not that Dan had much room to speak - with  no studies to distract him, he could easily spend from dawn until long after dusk writing music, or trying out melodies and harmonies by some slapdash sound mixing on his laptop. They hadn’t won the competition, but they had come third which still meant a certain sum of money and the promise of a couple of more gigs in various venues during the summer.

Kyle didn’t have time to help, and Dan carefully swallowed down his disappointment and played the keys himself. He had a YouTube channel now, and not an inconsiderate amount of followers.

Dan still slept in Kyle’s bed, but they never seemed to go to bed at the same time, and so they slept with their backs to each other and never woke up together anymore - Kyle had to get up early for work, and Dan tended to wake up long after that, rolling over into sheets that had long since grown cold.

September rolled around and with it, classes. If Dan had expected Kyle to have more free time, the notion was put to shame immediately, because apparently working overtime every day paid off since they kept Kyle on for part-time work, which in reality meant that Kyle didn’t have nine to five weekdays, but rather was called in any free day he had for any of the hours he could put in.

Dan’s life was getting busy too - Woody and Will had kept jamming together, and they even managed to book gigs in both Liverpool and London, so Dan could be gone for days at a time. He had to admit that he loved it more than he thought he would, but he hated that he couldn’t expect Kyle to set his life aside to follow Dan, or at least lend him a bit of it the times Dan was home.

It wasn’t that Kyle didn’t want to be with Dan - at least, that’s what he said into the skin of Dan’s shoulder, the few times they did manage to go to bed at the same time. Dan tried to hold onto that, but it kept slipping away with every morning he woke up alone and every time their entire daily communication was by hastily scrawled post-it notes on the fridge.

And Dan would have accepted it - it had been too good to be true anyway, falling in love with your best friend and flatmate - if it hadn’t been for the way Kyle seemed to grow more and more harried every day, the circles under his eyes darkening like his mood.

“I miss music,” Kyle said one evening, when rain battered the window panes like it wanted to break the glass. He had come into the living room, where Dan was working by his laptop, holding a bowl of leftover noodles that Dan wasn’t sure he had reheated at all.

“We can put something on,” Dan said, pulling his headphones down so they hung around his neck. “I can stop doing this.”

Kyle gave a shrug and shook his head. Dan felt his heart break a little.

“No, it’s fine,” Kyle said. “I meant more like, I miss playing music myself.”

“I have a gig coming up on Friday,” Dan said, turning towards Kyle but fiddling with the hem of his hoodie. “Like, I’m sure you could play the keys with me if you want.”

Kyle’s moustache wobbled into a crooked smile. Dan smiled back and got to his feet, overcome by the impulse to kiss Kyle and his moustache. He did, but Kyle was half turned away, to save his bowl of noodles.

“I thought it was on Saturday,” Kyle said. “In London.”

Dan suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands; he put them in his pockets, and then they were like two strangers standing turned away from each other but in an intimate proximity.

“The London gig with Will and Woody is on Saturday, yeah,” Dan said. “But I’ve got a smaller one here on Friday. You should come. After work”

“I can’t,” Kyle said, and Dan tried to cling to the regret in his voice. “There’s this after work thing on Friday. I wish I could, though. I’ll try to make it down to London with you.”

“No, it’s alright,” Dan said and kissed Kyle’s cheek briefly, the beard scratching his lips, even as he swallowed his disappointment. “I understand.”

Δ

Dan felt he’d gotten a pretty good handle on gigs at this point - show up, set up, sneak a shot beforehand to calm the nerves, try to get at least a couple of people to dance during the gig, get paid mostly in free beer. It worked, and Dan could do it.

But something was nagging in the back of Dan’s mind when he met with the organizer backstage - and backstage was just the storeroom of the pub, a too brightly lit room filled with crates and shelves of alcohol. Dan tried to put the notion of discomfort down to nerves for the gig tomorrow - they would only have a couple of hours to rehearse together in London.

Going out on stage - again, a generous word for a cleared away space close to the bar, looking out over the scattered tables - Dan tried to swallow the nervous sense of foreboding and went up to the keyboard and leaned into the mic to speak.

He had already opened his mouth when his eyes fell on a couple of tables that had been pushed together by the far end of the room shrouded in haze and darkness. What drew his gaze to them he couldn’t say for the life of him, but nevertheless he saw the conglomeration of men in suit jackets and women in what no doubt was pencil skirts, and among them, Kyle.

He wasn’t wearing a suit jacket, but he was wearing the dress shirt he had been wearing on that first night Dan had come home to Kyle kissing him. The white of it stood out starkly in the gloom, and Dan thought he would recognize the slope of his shoulders anywhere.

“Thanks for coming,” Dan said into the mic. “This is for someone I love.”

Dan wanted to be able to say that he poured his heart into his song; that his performance was transcendent; that his words would call Kyle to him like a siren song - his voice nearly broke on one note. But when he finished his last song, the party of suit jackets, pencil skirts, and Kyle was gone, and Dan felt empty.

He declined the free beer, packed up his things, and decided to drive straight to London through the night. Will would let him sleep on the sofa and they could maybe squeeze in an extra hour of rehearsal.

* * *

 

**iii. aubade**

The atmosphere was quite different in London - the place was larger for starters, and more geared toward live music with a proper backstage leading out to a proper stage where Woody’s drums were already set up and you could trip over the tangles of wire if you weren’t careful. Smoke was already pouring out over the dance floor where people stood gathered and dancing to the music from the speakers. Still Dan felt the same apprehension, a keen absence itching beneath his skin.

There were a couple of bands performing before they went up on stage, and the three of them spent the time arguing about what they should call themselves. Or Woody and Will did, Dan mostly nodded thoughtfully and worried the hem of his t-shirt to keep from repeatedly pushing his hands through his already wild hair.

It was almost a relief when it was time to go out on stage, but they had reached no consensus on the band name, so Dan introduced them all by name before settling in behind the keys and striking up the first note.

To Dan’s amazement, there were people dancing to their songs and singing along - singing words Dan had written. Someone was pressed up close to the stage, reaching up towards Dan, and Dan had no idea what to do with the fact that they apparently had fans.

He settled for thanking them profusely between songs, which seemed to work.

“Alright, we have one last song for your before we leave you alone,” Dan said after what seemed like hours that had gone by in a blink. His words were met with mixed cheering and chanting, and Dan felt himself smile.

It froze, just like the breath in his lungs when he saw a familiar set of shoulders in the crowd.

Kyle wasn’t wearing the dress shirt; he was wearing a dark t-shirt and his eyes were dark, and Dan didn’t know what to do. The looked at each other across the sea of people, and Dan was vaguely aware that Will and Woody tried to get his attention to get the song going.

Dan saw Kyle weave through the throng, without any siren call at all, and before he knew it, Kyle pressed through to the front and, brazen as you like, made it onto the stage with one leap.

“You’re here,” Dan said, thankfully turned away from the mic. He saw Kyle smile, and it was like ice melting on a spring day.

“I am,” Kyle said. “I was wondering if you’d let me play the keys.”

“Of course,” Dan said, and moved aside to let Kyle slip in beside him. “But I thought you had work tomorrow.”

“I quit,” Kyle said and placed his hand on the keys, as if to measure out the distance between them with his fingers. “Fuck financial stability, that’s what I say.”

“What the fuck Kyle,” Woody said behind them. “What are you doing here? You don’t even know what song we’re going to play.”

“Let’s play the one about the volcano,” Kyle said, and Dan laughed. Their hands brushed together as Dan played the first note. Woody obligingly counted them in and they set off, and this time Dan was sure he did sing his heart out.

They walked off stage to cheering and applause, and Dan laced his and Kyle’s fingers together. Kyle paused in the doorway, pulling Dan back a little. They kissed on the threshold, and Dan couldn’t wait to pull Kyle across it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I made a playlist for this fic on spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/11176981656/playlist/7EamJqUNQ0oU4doyI8A0vc)
> 
> Leave a comment if you liked the fic, [or come say hi on tumblr!](http://trailsofpaper.tumblr.com/tagged/orpheus%20au)


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